In October 2021, the seventh biggest company in the world,
Facebook Inc announced a rebrand that took most of us by surprise.
Renaming themselves to a word normally associated with gamers and Ancient Greek,
Meta could become a household service in the not too distant future
But what does the word Meta actually mean? What is the Metaverse?
And why did founder Mark Zuckerberg describe it as the future of the internet?
Here’s How It Happened.
First, let’s get up to speed with where Facebook is today
and what led to such a major change in strategy.
Since starting out in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, the company has become
so much more than just a place to like and comment on your friends’ photos.
The firm acquired fellow social platform Instagram in 2012,
as well as messaging giant WhatsApp two years later.
But perhaps most relevant to this video was the $2 billion acquisition
of Virtual Reality service, Oculus
On top of all this, the majority of Facebook’s other purchases were referred to
as talent acquisitions, a phrase used to describe innovative startups that are bought
and soon shut down but integrated into the buyer’s own platforms.
But what’s this got to with the company’s recent name change?
Well the Metaverse, where the word Meta comes from,
is the concept of a virtual world where users can interact for both work and play,
or as Zuckerberg called it, ‘a new phase of interconnected virtual experiences’.
The concept could be compared to ideas from a few Hollywood films
like Snow Crash, The Matrix and Ready Player One
And with the help of a VR headset, it could be used to attend a concert,
meet up with friends, or even try on new clothes.
This might sound like a piece of science fiction,
but people may have said the same thing thirty years ago about a touch
screen computer in your pocket that can make instant video calls to anywhere on the planet.
Zuckerberg had already prepared the world for this change in strategy, outlining a few months earlier
that he planned to help form ‘an embodied internet where instead of just viewing content - you are
in it’ and that it was time to move on from living through ‘small, glowing rectangles’.
Horizon Worlds is the name for the company’s current prototype of online
virtual reality gaming, and will phase out the Oculus brand over the next few years
Other gaming platforms like Roblox and Minecraft have already been described as early forms of the
Metaverse, in the way millions of people are able to hang out in a computer generated environment.
Roblox in particular is proving a successful hunting ground for early adopters.
The company claims creators and developers will make $500 million this year alone,
while successful partnerships with the likes of Vans and Gucci
pave the way for a future economy that takes place entirely online.
But aside from Zuckerberg’s questionable acting skills,
the reaction to October’s announcement was far from unanimous.
Facebook already has a shoddy reputation for privacy, and there are concerns that
the new technology not only makes the company more powerful but also
adds to the near-endless amount of data they have stored about their users.
Additionally there are concerns that the cost of equipment to join the metaverse will be
prohibitively expensive, only widening the gap of opportunities between social classes.
But ultimately, many think the metaverse is just a step in the wrong direction.
At a time when millions are struggling with feelings of loneliness and anxiety,
maybe greater focus should be placed on physical interactions over virtual ones.
Overall it can’t be denied that the growth of the metaverse will make for fascinating viewing.
Meta has already pledged $10 billion to the project alone, and experts believe the
platform could also turn NFT’s and cryptocurrency into a truly mainstream way of exchanging value
Don’t forget to leave a comment saying how you think the Metaverse will look in 10 years time.
And that’s How It Happened
Thanks for watching.